Peer-to-peer networks (“peer networks”) allow computer devices of the network to act as peer nodes that are capable of communicating with other peer nodes in the peer network so that the peers can exchange data without having to go through a central server. For example, one use of peer networks is a photo sharing network, such QURIO™ provided by Flashpoint Technology, Inc., in which users can store images in web photo albums that guests are invited to view, download, or order prints. The use of peer networks to personally share photos from a user's personal computer or electronic device allows users to easily share pictures from their own computers or devices without the time-consuming process of uploading photos to a central server. Other types of content can also be shared using a peer network; for example, users can publish content such as text and documents, video, or audio files, such as MP3 files of music or speech.
One of the difficulties of having a large peer network is the inability to detect if there has been new content published on a favorite peer. It involves checking and rechecking to see if any content hosted on the peer is new, i.e., has not been downloaded or viewed by that user previously. If a guest has a large list of peers that he or she regularly checks, this can be time consuming and tedious. There currently exists no mechanism for a guest to browse new content published via a peer network without checking every single peer on the network. As more and more of produced electronic content is created and hosted closer to the producer of the content, it becomes more difficult for consumers of content to keep track of new content that is produced.
A recently popular trend in Internet and World Wide Web use is web syndication, which has been used by news and information organizations to distribute content over the Internet and other electronic mediums. Web syndication allows a website or a section of a website to be made available as “web feeds” for other websites to receive and distribute to users. Typically, the feeds are available from a central site so that any user can display or output a list of content referred to by the feed. The content can be updated by the owner of the feed and the updates are automatically provided in the feed. Formats such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), JavaScript, or Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) can be used to encode content that is syndicated. Web content syndication formats, such as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) or ATOM can be used to structure XML-based content for syndication, for example. These syndication technologies have also been used by weblogs or “blogs” (i.e., online journals and the like) as a way of syndicating content of the blogs to several readers. The syndication technology allows a reader to scan the syndicated feed of several blogs to look for new or interesting content that the reader may be interested in reading more about. Typically, a syndicated feed reader or aggregator is used to scan feeds for new content.
However, syndicated feeds are not available for peer networks. One reason is because peers are not always available due to users shutting down peer computers or other conditions, and thus feeds served by those peers would not always be available. Thus, content sharing using feeds is provided using central-server-based networks, not peer networks. Content hosted by peers is therefore not provided for easy access to other users over networks.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system allowing user content provided from a peer in a peer network to be easily accessed, searched, and browsed by other users. The present invention addresses such a need.